Page 68 - Book Review
Women on the balancing beam
As more Indian women enter the workforce, two recent books examine the tenuous balance that women struggle to achieve between professionalism and their gender-based roles. One is written by an award-winning journalist/author Pallavi Aiyar, who calls herself an elite-in-a-developing-country kind of brat; the other studies inter-generational changes in attitudes towards women's work through case studies of respondents who have been the first women in their family to seek jobs.Author Alice W Clark has observed the strategies that have enabled modern Indian women to work in spite of the limitations placed upon them and concludes that familial support is one of the most important facilitators of women's careers. Whether in large cities or small towns, the extent of a girl's education (which determines her employability and her attitude towards work) is most often determined by her family, especially by the father, and post-marriage, by her husband's attitudes. Ms Clark writes about Lilawati
A Promethean project
An internationally famed cellist, also the best friend of a ruthless politician, serving as the clandestine owner of shady companies that help the elite in his country siphon away public funds; corrupt officials selling off broadcasting rights for major sporting events to a private media company for a pittance; a "banana republic" in Central America offering a tax haven; and at the centre of it, the mysterious son of a former Waffen-SS officer assisting drug lords, gun runners and autocrats conceal their ill-gotten wealth... Sounds like the plot of an Alistair McLean pot boiler?On the contrary: It's the true story of the greatest data leak ever. And, the international journalists who dug through the unimaginable mountains of data to focus the light of day on a shadow financial system that aids the rich and powerful conceal their wealth, and maintain the status quo of inequality. Now, the world knows of the leak as "Panama Papers" - the 1.5 million documents of the Panamanian law firm M
Syria's forgotten war
As Henri De Wailly's book, rigged wars are by no means the prerogative of the 21st century powers
Deep thinking about immigration
From Hobbes and Hegel to John Stuart Mill and John Rawls, the seminal figures of Western political theory are united in their almost complete neglect of immigration. No doubt they have their reasons. Who among them witnessed anything like the global refugee crisis of 2015? Or the anxieties about national identity that it inflamed? Be that as it may, with hostility toward immigrants and refugees fueling the "Brexit" movement and the presidential campaign of Donald Trump, we could use some deep thinking about the relationship between the state and its citizens.On the case is the political philosopher David Miller. His book Strangers in Our Midst: The Political Philosophy of Immigration aims to be the first to combine such an abstract approach to the topic with such a strong dose of realism. Make no mistake: Mr Miller is a humane, social democratic Oxford University professor. But comes down in favour of a state's right - except when human rights are threatened - to close its borders to o
India's unofficial apartheid
Being the Other: The Muslim in India explores the continuing marginalisation of Muslims in India in the post-partition years
A recognition of Kalidasa
Few people know that Swami Vivekananda was fluent in Sanskrit. He had a disciple named Sharatchandra Chakravarty who kept a diary, written in Bengali but it has since been translated into English. This anecdote is from this diary. Shri Ramakrishna had a householder disciple named Nag Mahashaya. On one occasion in 1897, when Sharatchandra Chakravarty was present, another disciple, who frequently visited Nag Mahashaya, came to meet Swami Vivekananda and mentioned Nag Mahashaya. Swami Vivekananda addressed this disciple in Sanskrit with a reference to Nag Mahashaya's great spiritual success. Translated, the quote reads: "We have been destroyed in our pursuit of the truth. O bee! You are the one who has indeed been successful."What is remarkable is not that Swami Vivekananda spoke in Sanskrit, but that he used a quote from literature, Kalidasa's Abhijnanashakuntalam in this case. The Shakuntala story is about King Dushyanta and Shakuntala, and King Dushyanta said this when a bee was hoveri
Our digital lives tomorrow
Defining and understanding these 12 technological forces and how they will shape our future in the next 30 years is the thrust of The Inevitable
Dark history of the Olympics
The true history of the games is a far cry from the platitude-laden, sepia-toned nostalgia pumped out by the International Olympic Committee and sponsors
Doctors diagnose the decline of health care
Authors Arun Gadre and Abhay Shukla have based this book on a set of 78 interviews with leading doctors across the country conducted at Support for Advocacy and Training to Health Initiatives
The new world troika
Ms Anja Manuel has tackled political systems and dissent in both countries as interrelated themes
My granduncle's hat & other tales
S Muthiah and Ranjitha Ashok's book collects plenty of such anecdotes from erstwhile employees of British firms in India, and presents them in an immensely readable format
In the engine room of the start-up economy
Antonio Garcia Martinez's Chaos Monkeys, a book whose bland all-purpose title belies the fact that this is a valley account like no other
Narasimha Rao: one legacy, two verdicts
The book contains evocative details of Rao's failures in preventing two of the ugliest incidents of social disharmony in independent India - the 1992 Babri Masjid demolition and the 1984 Sikh riots
Philosopher's guide to climate change
Amitav Ghosh creates a fabric out of threads drawn from all the themes that must be part of a complete conversation on climate change
How the battles were lost & won
The transition from British rule to independence is conventionally described as peaceful. This is true only insofar as there was no armed conflict with the erstwhile imperial power, for multitudes died in the Partition bloodbath and there was open war within two months of the "Brexit".The subcontinent has never enjoyed an extended period of peace since. India has fought three-and-a-half wars with Pakistan, one war with China (plus a big artillery duel), indulged in an insane foray into Sri Lanka, carried out a more justifiable counter-coup in the Maldives and also been enmeshed in innumerable long-running internal conflicts with separatists, insurgents, Maoists, and what have you. The republic also undertook several "police actions" between 1948 and 1961, to integrate princely states like Hyderabad and Junagadh, and to force the Portuguese out of Goa, Daman and Diu.This book covers conventional conflicts and police actions during the first quarter-century of independent India's existen
Biography of Mr Bush as scathing indictment
For George W Bush, the summer already looks unbearable. The party he gave his life to will repudiate him by nominating a bombastic serial insulter, who makes the famously brash former president look like a museum docent by comparison. And a renowned presidential biographer is weighing in with a judgment that makes Mr Bush's gentleman's Cs at Yale look like the honour roll.If Mr Bush eventually gets a more sympathetic hearing by history, as he hopes, it will not start with Jean Edward Smith's Bush, a comprehensive and compelling narrative punctuated by searing verdicts of all the places where the author thinks the 43rd president went off track.Mr Smith, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, made a name for himself in part with masterly biographies of Dwight D Eisenhower and Ulysses S Grant, offering historical reassessments of underrated presidents who looked better with the passage of time. With Bush, he sticks to the original conventional assessment, presenting a shoot-from-the-hip Texan
SLAPPing the messenger
On the evening of April 15, 2014, Gas Wars: Crony Capitalism and the Ambanis, a book written by Paranjoy Guha-Thakurta, Subir Ghosh and Jyotirmoy Chaudhuri was officially released at the India Habitat Centre in New Delhi. The next day lawyers for Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries (RIL) sent the authors a legal notice alleging defamation, calling for a cease on the sale, publication and distribution of the book. The notice suggested that all copies be destroyed, publicity for the book be stopped and the authors tender an unconditional apology. The same notice was sent to the publisher, distributor, printer, internet retailers Amazon, Flipkart and Kobo and even to the lady who sent the invitations for the launch function.A week later, on April 22, came a second legal notice from ADAG, the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group. On April 23, came a third notice to all the nine respondents. This one took umbrage at comments made at the launch function and asked for damages of Rs 100 crore within 10
Himalayan blunders in Kedarnath
Rage of the river is a light and breezy read. Within the first few pages it feels like an immersive travelogue, except that there are no happy scenes in the Mandakini valley
Central banks as 'pawnbrokers'
A lot of effort goes into sustaining what Mervyn King calls the "alchemy" of modern monetary and banking systems in his latest book
Finance, the master technology
"The very rich are different from you and me," Ernest Hemingway has F Scott Fitzgerald write in the original version of The Snows of Kilimanjaro. "Yes," comes the response, "they have more money."This famous (and wholly fictional) exchange is memorable because it captures so succinctly one of the great fascinations of finance, how it is at the same time something so completely mysterious and so utterly banal. It also poses an important question: Does having more money than someone constitute a difference only in quantity, or in quality? Does the increase of financial wealth just make for more of the same - or does it change people in a more essential way?The goal of William N Goetzmann, professor of finance and management at Yale, in his book is to explore the consequences of the invention and growth of finance. As his title suggests, his conclusion is that they are firmly positive.The idea that dominates this book is that finance is a "technology of civilization" - a way of thinking
